Before this board, I considered it a story of love, simply stripped away of all but the basics.

One bright day, parallellogram (p) proposes to circle (c). C rejects p for whatever reason. A year passes. A square (s) proposes to c. C accepts, they have children. 10 years later, things aren't going well between s and c. They have an argument (I thought this was about s wanting a bigger house and c saying they didn't have cash, but it doesn't really matter I think) and s hits c.

C runs away, it thinks about p and how great a person/shape it was and then goes to find it, only to find it's already passed away.

C cries away and stays by p's grave until it dies.

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It took me a couple of 'reads' to understand the passage of time thing.

After reading the whole series of comments, I came to the following conclusions/felt like stating the following:

1 - opinions and the audience do definitely help shape and define art.

2 - I didn't assign sexuality to them. I sort of think of them as asexual beings who just happen to have sex... in any case, it could work either way.

3 - the colours in the speech bubbles for me represent the 'purity' of the words. Grey is something they don't care about either way, black representing hatred and white love. Or something like that.

4 - personally I consider the shapes/colours arbitrary.

5 - Didn't notice the pairings. The pairs could be a little closer though... I mean, it looks as if they're walking one in front of another and later on Scott shows the shapes to exist on multiple depths - i.e. they can be in front of/behind each other relative to the camera.

The general story that's being put forward is pretty clear, and the majority pretty much agree that it's a story of love, rejection, and shapes getting freaky.

So I'll just talk about some of my personal conclusions on the comic.

Personally, I associated gender roles without even thinking about it. I assumed the round shapes to be females and the angular shapes to be males. Call me sexist if you want, but that's just how I interpereted it.

The reason I think that angular/round determines gender (not talking specific roles here) is because in the comic, we see both Paralellagram and Square courting Circle with the prospect of a traditional marriage with kids and all. So one can assume that angular/round are the opposite sex.

In the part with the arguement, it didn't really seem to me that the complaint about the children and the complaint about the money were related. When I saw that, I just got a sense of general dysfunction in the family, which would make much more sense for Square to hit Circle, instead of just "We have no money!" "RRAAAAAHHHH!!!!! SQUARE SMASH!!!!!"

Just a couple things to add to this 3 year old discussion that ended far before I got here.

Men usually have more angular body lines while women have rounder lines. Breasts, hips, shoulders. It's really that simple. Scott Mccloud's drawings are just very simple iconic drawings designed to express the most basic idea. round=female, angular=male.

Hard to believe nobody's figured out the parallelogram's actual revenge. I personally belive his revenge is that the circle now feels what he felt; his lonliness when the one geometric figure he loved is now gone.

There have been several references to "The Dot and the Line" as an animation by Chuck Jones (of Bugs Bunny fame), but it started out in 1963 as a lovely little book (subtitled "A Romance in Lower Mathematics") by Norton Juster (author of "The Phantom Tollbooth").

One of my Wikipedian friends just gave me #14 to interpret, and I think I was slightly off...

I "read" the first few frames, and immediately felt that the Parallelogram was threatening the circle for bumping into him. (Note, at first I assumed both were male) - The frame gave me the impression of the Parallelogram saying "I'm gonna kill ya", because of the angel, then "I'm gonna tie you up, smack you over the head, drag you away and bury you" in the next frame.

When I mentioned the hostility thing to the guy who sent it to me, and asked me to interpret it, I noted that he mentioned I was the first (I assume that HE knew of) to attribute hostility to the Parallelogram.

He advised me to read it again with the impression of the Parallelogram making a romantic advance upon the circle.

I did this, and it all became immediately clear as to what was going on. The Parallelogram asked the circle to marry her, as she wanted them to be together forever, have kids, and be together till they died. The circle declines, leaving the Parallelogram dejected.

3 seasons later, the circle meets a square, who suggests the same thing, the circle agrees to it, and they do everything I mentioned earlier, get married, make love, have kids. Everything is peaceful for 10 years before they split up, circle has no more money, square wants more kids. She nuts him (circle), and throws him out.

He trudges around all day, eventually finding the grave of the Parallelogram, who, 10 years later, has already died. Circle bursts into tears, and they wind up together anyhow, as they *should* have been at the start.

The guy also asked me why I attributed the circle as male...

My reason for this was, during the argument between the square and the circle, circle was the one moaning about money. I automatically, and probably incorrectly, assumed circle was the male, and the breadwinner.

I know this thread is very old, so sorry for waking it up again, but I'd like to know other people's thoughts, if I may.